14 DAY TRIAL // This year's CeBIT electronics show in Hanover, Germany was the playground for a large variety of devices, out of which the ones that stood out the most were, most likely, the 8 Series AMD chipset-based motherboards. The show also saw a significant number of netbooks, nettops and AiO PCs, many based on the NVIDIA ION. Still, amongst the many items on display, there was also a certain concept for a type of product that would be nothing short of mandatory starting with 2014. Specifically, hardware maker Innovabite was revealed to have developed a type of PSU that consumed no power when it was turned off.
Regardless of how energy-efficient a power supply is, even those with 80 Plus Gold certification consume a small amount of electricity when the computer is shut down. So far, it has been impossible to achieve a 0W consumption, because there is no direct connection between the power supply itself and the computer's On/Off switch. This limitation needs to be resolved soon, given that all products in Europe will have to have a 0W power consumption when inactive, starting with 2014.
Innovabite aims to bring the solution closer to the present with its upcoming PSUs. The company's approach is based on the idea that, by creating the needed direct connection between the PSU and the on/off switch, the PC could be automatically driven into a different type of standby called “Off Mode.”
The upcoming PSUs from Innovabite will all have the 80 Plus Gold certification and boast a so-called mode-switch, which will allow users to toggle between the classic power-consumption mode and the “nonstandby” mode. These devices will also be easily fixable, through the implementation of a removable fuse (the fuse is the main cause for PSU failure).
The 300W, 450W and 600W power supplies will become available in July and will carry price tags of 79 Euro, 89 Euro and 109 Euro, respectively.